LE Mictlan woes

[ET]

Hey y'all. I've been lurking here for a while but this is my first post so go easy on me.

I've been playing around with LE mictlan for a while now and I'm totally in love with the nation. The big problem though is that I'm addicted to a water bless and a SC pretender.

My typical strategy is to go with a Dagon with Water-9 and dominion-9. I use him to get me started on land and take provinces without any losses to my army. After I get a big enough group of the sacred frog-men I plop Dagon into the water and continue with my conventional troops.

This all works great except that I'd much rather have a pretender with strong blood magic to make use of the millions of blood slaves I'll be eventually getting. Which leads me to my questions:

1) What does a blood-9 blessing even do? I try blessing my troops with it but I don't see any change (besides the str buff) on their info pane.

2) I feel like I should be trying to get the most out of my sacred troops, is there a bless that I should be using instead of the water that would be more effective?

3) Does anyone have any tips for fighting with mictlan without a bless strat? It seems like no matter what combination of their archaic troops I use I just take too many losses to carry out an effective campaign.

4) Is there some hidden gem of a spell that I could shoot for where water-9 would be required? That way I can keep playing the way I've been playing. I can get water 4 on my frog mages so it would need to have a steep path requirement to make it so I couldn't just cast the spell with one of them.

5) Is there something that I'm totally overlooking? Any advice you guys want to volunteer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
ET

[Cor]

1) strength buff and death curse. i think death curse curses any units that kill the blessed unit.(is this right?) Anyway could be useful for those little flying buggers to go and curse back row commanders.

I am playing a blood 9, death 4 bless and it seems to be working nicely. I just dont expect my sacreds to live very long. And thats okay because they are so cheap and easy to recruit.

Air seems like it would be very useful because of lack of sheilds. Earth seems useful for the boost to protection.

[ET]

Wow, that blood curse seems interesting. I'd really prefer something where I didn't have to loose the unit to get the benefit though.

Do you mainly use sacred units in your army?

[Wauthan]

I only play singleplayer so my advice might not be of much help.

1. Blood 9 blessing makes your sacred troops into "kamikaze curse bombers". That is they put a curse (greatly increased chance of afflictions) on the unit that kills them. Mictlan is just about the only nation that can put this effect into a strategy since they got such plentiful sacred troops. Not such an optimal blessing for the jaguar warrior though.

2. Water is a good solid blessing for Mictlan. Closing in fast and boosting defence is a good tactic for unarmoured troops, especially the eagle warriors. I personally prefer nature 9 blessing since I find that it works well with jaguar warriors (it's worthless for eaglewarriors though). Nature 9 and Blood 6 lets the jaguar warriors hit with the strength of Jotuns.

3. Not that much experience with that, since Mictlan practically screams "bless strategy dammit!". Mictlan armies are thougher than one might give them credit for though, but they need backup from spellcasters and summoned creatures to deal with heavily armoured units. But with good scales you can quickly field *a lot* of spellcasters since sacred troops demand less upkeep.

4 & 5. Hard to give any tips since I have no idea what strategy your currently using. High tier water magic is not exactly of the "I win now" variety. Since you favor that particular nation I assume got several good strategies already. Perhaps you could post some specific problems you keep running into?

[Cor]

ET said:
Wow, that blood curse seems interesting. I'd really prefer something where I didn't have to loose the unit to get the benefit though.

Do you mainly use sacred units in your army?

Actually I use slaves in my army. They suck, but they are free.I get about 5-10 slave collectors and just set them loose.
I send vast numbers of slaves 300-1000 in with a backbone of sacreds.They take sever casualties every battle, which means more micromanagement. I recruit nothing but sacreds from midgame on.

[Ozymandias]

Mictlan is all about the blessing. Their national conjurations and blood summonings are all sacred, so your bless is still valuable even in the late game when your national troops are only useful in a support role. Jaguar Warriors are really good. I play EA Mictlan more then LA, but my standard bless is w9n6b6 this coupled with a high base dominion allows for cheap effective expansion armies. Jags get good mileage out of regeneration because of their thirty hit points over two forms, but the nature bless is largely to benefit my later, high hit point, super combatant, demonic sacreds. Transformed Jaguar Warriors, Jaguars, and Ozelotls all have three attacks so a fire bless is very strong for them.

It is very hard to find a use for the nonsacred Mictlan national troops. For patroling, garisoning, and sieging Slave levys are your best choice. Slaves are also perfect for absorbing initial lance charges and decoying arrow fire. The map move 2 Warriors (the 9g, 2 resource, naked slingers) are marginally useful with a fire priest and Flaming Arrows, but indy archers with precision greater then 10 aren't that uncommon.

[ET]

Wauthan,

I don't really have a cohesive strategy, but I have a few tricks that I like to use. I like to get all of the water provinces early, then I cast voice of tiamat to get a huge gem income. I also like building underwater temples and sticking in frog mages with jade knives to try and screw with my enemies dominion.

I basically keep building the same stuff then supplementing my armies with summons and items as I get more gems. I get a pretty good income by doing hyper-rapid expansion by taking a province a turn in the water with my Dagon and just try to outproduce my enemies.

Cor,

Wow, I didn't really think about using slaves. I'll definately try that next game. That fits well with my tendency to try to just make bigger armies then my enemies.

Ozy,

What is a good chassis for building a pretender with those paths? I definitely want to try that blessing. Plus it seems like those magic paths would allow for some great global enchantments/summons.

This stuff is great guys, thanks!
ET

[Ozymandias]

An imprisoned Fountain of Blood with scales of order 3, sloth 3, heat 2, death 2, misfortune 2, and magic 1 can afford those paths and dominion 10 with 13 points left over. Many people will argue that dominion 10 is far to high, particularly for a pretender that will never use awe in battle. Buying a base dominion of ten allows sizable armies to be produced each round (a Priest King and ten Jaguar Warriors can take most any indy 5 province without losses; you would need to accept middling losses against indy 9 or send those armies in pairs) and it ensures that your blood sacrifices actually yield a temple check. Finally more temples, which will be needed for expansion castles if nothing else, do increase your holy budget beyond ten. Lastly dominion ten, jade knives, and ample blood slaves can make for very strong dominion pushes.

[Valandil]

Hmm. I tried (without thinking math, just clicking stuff...) F9 B9 D9 N4 Smoking mirror, dom6, really bad scales. The ozelotl are pretty awesome.

[Reverend Zombie]

Valandil said:
Hmm. I tried (without thinking math, just clicking stuff...) F9 B9 D9 N4 Smoking mirror, dom6, really bad scales. The ozelotl are pretty awesome.

They don't fare well vs. arrows for me, but I did not try Nature. How did your Jaguar Fiends fare against archery?